Free speech is the lifeblood of what we do. No one will defend the First Amendment right as much as a newsorganization.Butwiththegreat power of free speech comes great responsibility.

Tuesday, November 21 is the next Westfield Board of Education meeting — the second since the terror attack on Israel and the first since the publiclearnedthatBrendanGalligan has filed an ethics complaint against fellow board member Sahar Aziz.

Government meetings are something of our specialty here; we cover as many as we can, so we are very used to the process, and understand that public comment is not a conversation. Last month was the very first timewecanrememberthattheboard members did not comment at all at the end of the meeting, which they typically do.

While we support and encourage members of the public to attend, we ask that you not let your very real fear and anger get the best of you. Last month, we witnessed shouting, profanity and disorder. Each speaker gets just three minutes, and it is important, whether you agree with them or not, that they each have their time to be heard. Remember, theFirstAmendmentgives the right to “peaceably” assemble, and we will always encourage the public to do so.

When Ms.Aziz tweeted “from the river to the sea” and “drop theADL” in 2022, we acknowledged her Constitutionally- protected right to free speech and to hold her own opinions. What we asked her to do, as a human being, a board of education member and a supposed scholar, was to acknowledge the deep pain and fear she caused to the Jewish communitywithherstatements.She did not then, nor has she now.

Ms.Aziz continues to spew misinformation from unverified sources without retraction (her tweets that blamed Israel for the bombing ofAl-Ahli hospital come to mind, as do other posts suggesting that Israeli soldiers had killed Gazans along a highway,when,infact,itwasHamas that carried out that particular atrocity). She also tweets and re-tweets videosofanti-Israelandanti-Semitic rallies that resonate with chants of “resistance is justified where people are occupied,” and of events where violence is perpetrated against Jews, members of the LGBTQ community and others. She will tweet about an Arab student injured in a hit-andrun hate crime, but not about Jewish people injured or killed by Palestinian protesters. She re-tweets things calling out anti-Semitism with criticism that it fails to call out anti-Muslim behavior. She said that she reads the signs in our towns that say “I Stand With Israel” as “I stand with Israel’s genocide of Palestinians” and that “The moral depravity is inexcusable.” She then proclaimed herself a feminist on the side of her “Palestinian Sisters” and told White feminists to “get out of our way” in a piece she wrote for Al Jazeera. It should be noted that we could not find any instance of her calling for a release of the hostages held by Hamas.

There is something we can agree with Ms.Aziz on —White feminists and decent people in general want to save women and the world from Hamas, Isis and the Taliban. Decent people want girls and children to be educated, cared for, fed and sheltered. Hamas does not want that.

In all of her tweeting and writing, Ms. Aziz decries anti-Muslim hate crimes (as we all should), but makes no mention of the dramatic rise of anti-Semitichatecrimesasshestokes the flames.

According to the FBI data, hate crimes in general have been on the rise since 2014, but of those, anti-Semitic hate crimes saw the largest rise, with an increase of 36 percent between 2021 and 2022. Since October 7, they have increased another 388 percent, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

To delve a little deeper, worldwide there are 16.1 million Jews, 1.9 billionMuslimsand2.2billionChristians. According to the OSCE’s Hate Crime Report (data compiled from reporting nations in Europe, North America and Asia) for 2022, there were 2,529 hate crimes against Jews (378 violent attacks against people), 979 anti-LGBTQ hate crimes (603 violent), 768 anti-Christian hate crimes (34 violent) and 287 anti-Muslim hate crimes (60 violent).

Asaprofessor,awoman,alawyer, and a board of education member, Ms. Aziz is a disappointment at every level. She is very well aware that we’re living in a powder keg and that even free speech has its limits: free speech does not mean that you can yell “fire” in a crowded movie theater. It does not mean that you can incite violence. In our opinion, her speech is over that line — but in no way does this give any member of the public permission to cross that line against her. Speak out, peaceably protest, write to the board, your legislators and Rutgers, run for the board of education inApril — but do not stoop to the hate we have seen at the protests she endorses.